I am currently a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine in the UK, having written for Wired UK since its launch in 2009, and speak regularly on the impact of developing technologies on consumer behaviors at Wired Consulting events and elsewhere.
In my copious free time, I write for Wired, GQ and elsewhere on the emerging digital culture, from gaming giants to adventurous startups, and provide creative insight for technology companies. In previous lives, I managed corporate communications for a large software company, and was a senior creative at a Hoxton agency. But then again, who wasn't?
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SOPA, Skyrim and My Little Pony - Infringement is Magic?

(NB: There is a chunk of editorial in the way – if you would just like to see a My Little Pony setting fire to a village, skip to page 2.)

Yesterday’s technology news cycle was, of course, dominated by protests against SOPA - whether it was the retwitting of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) for using a background image without accreditation on www.texansforlamarsmith.com, or counts of the number of signatories to Google‘s anti-SOPA petition (4.5 million), or tweets about SOPA (2.4 million, probably not including this now-deleted humdinger from Jonathan Lamy, SVP of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America).

Please insert a copyright-free sad trombone sound.

Although this incarnation of SOPA may be messily gored, the instincts behind it remain. These are the same instincts which gave us the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – at the time considered a lobby-bought insult to American democracy and now seen as the fruit of a period of near-Solonic justice and moderation, so remarkably have the goalposts moved in the interim.

Which is why the case of Hasbro (NASDAQ:HAS), and their ‘My Little Pony’ property, is so interesting. When Hasbro decided to refresh its product line, they could not have expected it to become a burgeoning cult among a periphery audience of largely twentysomething, largely male Internet users. These fans have taken to creating their own original work using their own and Hasbro’s characters, and also taking the video content of the ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic‘ series, posting it on the Internet and remixing it to create music videos, re-edits and in some cases entirely new episodes.

This “trailer” is a mixture of video taken from the animated series, broadcast on The Hub, the TV channel part-owned by Hasbro, and original material.

Perhaps uniquely positioned to appreciate what an empty stable looks like, and thus the logic of bolting its door, Hasbro has largely embraced the phenomenon. Uploads of content and derivative works to YouTube are often ignored as long as they do not use or impinge on the high-definition versions sold through iTunes. Linda Steiner, the Executive Vice President for Current Series at Hasbro, said of the series’ unexpected popularity.

You develop a show to make it the best show you can, and you hope the humour will translate to a broader audience. The young men and the overall cult success has been a very unexpected, amazing bonus! We all just look at each other in the office and can’t believe what is happening out there with this show. I’ve been in the kids business for 25 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this following. It is truly one of the most exciting times I can remember with a show launch.

My interview with Steiner can be found here, for the completist, along with some lessons ‘Friendship is Magic‘ has for content owners and producers. In terms of SOPA, the most important is this: it’s going to happen anyway. Any media which accumulates an audience is also going to find its properties beng adopted, adapted and repurposed. One can stamp on molehills – shut down websites, deliver takedown notices to YouTube, ultimately sue your potential audience. Or one can find ways to use the momentum to promote the brand.

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in my opinion its hilariously ironic that we fight against SOPA or PIPA (i fight against it of ur wondering…). SOPA is meteorically a large manifestation of basic yet important human emotion fear. The people behind SOPA feared that the current piracy levels will sky rocket as consumers find more ways to get programs and music for free. So basically we are fighting a “product” of a primitive human emotion that has saved us from many types of dangers in the past ^^ just thought u’d like to no that =D

Well, I think there’s a difference between being afraid of a sabre-toothed tiger (or indeed a giant fire-breathing pony) and being frighted of a changing business model. There’s something in the idea that the traditional media companies are, at heart, full of people who are possibly afraid that if their industries become unprofitable they will be unable to keep their jobs, and by extension feed their families, but in my experience there is a lot to be said for developing new skills rather than trying to delay the end of the value of your old ones for as long as possible…

Rotten WMG Constantly takes down well-meaning, creative fan videos that took at lot of work and only promote their songs. They’re really stupid – but they seem to have an entire stable of lawyers whose only job is to throw a wet blanket on a phenomenon that would actually be profitable if they weren’t such idiots. But it does provide employment for lawyers, so there is that – Gag.